Kenseth had struggled much of the weekend as he qualified 20th and was 23rd in the final practice heading into the race.

But he gradually put himself in the top 10 and seemed to have a top-five car for the final 100 laps of the 334-lap race.

“I’m certainly glad we're still leading,” Kenseth said. “Tonight was a big positive for us. It was a little bit of a struggle this weekend more than we anticipated. I didn't get a good lap qualifying, and that was really the start of us being behind tonight.

“About our second or third adjustment, … our group really hit it and really found something that I liked, and our car started driving really good.”

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver opened the Chase with back-to-back wins but had finished seventh and 11th in the last two races before Charlotte.

“You've got to be able to run in the top five every week to have a shot at this deal,” Kenseth said. “I know you're not going to finish there every week, but I think you have to be good enough to finish there every week and not make mistakes and hopefully get good finishes.”

The key, though, is to win the races drivers are supposed to win.

“I don’t know what we would have done differently,” Johnson said. “No caution, everything is fine. We were inches from beating the 24 (of Gordon) out (of the pits).

“If we would have beat the 24 out, we would have been on the front row in clean air and that would have been a different scenario.”

Restarting third, Johnson couldn’t get a good final restart behind Kahne and Gordon, his Hendrick Motorsports teammates.

“Just in the dirty air, I pushed the 5 (of Kahne) off into (Turn) 1, he didn’t get the best restart, and something to do with that combo got me off the bottom and a couple of cars got inside of me,” Johnson said.

So does Kenseth feel fortunate how it all played out?

“I'd feel more fortunate if we would have won. … That's part of the sport, “Kenseth said. “You just don't know when the caution is going to come out, and these restarts are crazy.

“You've got to be good on long runs and restarts and all that. Some nights are easier to restart than others.”